Today I continued the independent experiment that I started yesterday. By the time that I checked on it during the beginning of first period, the copper piece had collected lots more silver than yesterday when I left. The entire side of where the copper sat was covered completely in silver. I thought it looked really cool because the silver grew outwards in long trident like pieces, like I had heard from Andrew and the experiments online. The silver looked almost like it was plant or some type of fungus, not pieces of metal because of how it grew. I then took out the piece of copper out of the beaker and shook off all the silver pieces, which surprisingly came off easier than I thought they would. Throughout the course of the night, the silver nitrate started to become copper nitrate as the copper and silver replaced each other. This turned the silver nitrate into copper nitrate, which became a teal and blue color. After I took out the copper piece, I took the beaker filled of silver and copper nitrate and filtered out the silver pieces. I did this by using a piece of folded up filter paper and a funnel over a beaker to pour the mixture into. The left over copper nitrate filtered through into a beaker below, while the silver stayed on top of the filter paper. There ended up being a good amount of silver left from the experiment, which was cool to see. After I separated the silver and nitrate, Andrew explained some of the actual science behind the experiment. He told me about how as the silver leaves the silver nitrate and attaches to the wire, the actual copper starts to bond with the nitrate left behind, creating copper nitrate. When the copper nitrate was completely filtered through, I poured it back into a small beaker to use to start another experiment. The experiment is called the "Bloody Nail" experiment because you take copper nitrate and place an iron nail, or anything iron of your choice, and then when you take it out after a while the iron nail becomes a dark red color. The reason this happens is because the copper attaches to the nail, while the iron in the nail attaches to the nitrate. Since copper is a red color, it looks like a nail coated in blood when you pull it out of the mixture. By the end of the period today, the reaction had started slightly. I'm going to let the experiment sit over night so it can have more time to gather more copper.